New Books in Western European Studies

Year 2008 marked the introduction of a new economic governance regime in the European Union (EU) in response to the global financial crisis. Politicising Commodification: European Governance and Labour Politics from the Financial Crisis to the Covid Emergency (Cambridge UP, 2024), authored by leading scholars in the field and also available open access, uses a approach to capture the EU formulation of prescriptions and their uneven deployment across member states (Germany, Italy, Ireland, Romania), policy areas (employment relations, public services), and sectors (transport, water, and healthcare). The regime led to a much more vertical mode of EU integration, and its commodification agenda unleashed a plethora of union and social-movement protests, including transnationally. Listen to this engaging interview with the leading author, Prof. Roland Erne, to find out what inspired this book, how the team worked together, and which conclusions they arrived at. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

How did the research universities of the Enlightenment come into being? And what debt do they owe to scholars of the previous era? Focusing on the career of German polymath Johann Daniel Major (1634–93), Curating the Enlightenment: Johann Daniel Major and the Experimental Century (Cambridge University Press, 2024) by Dr. Vera Keller uncovers how late seventeenth-century scholars crafted the research university as a haven for critical inquiry in defiance of political and economic pressures. Abandoning the surety of established intellectual practice, this 'experimental century' saw Major and his peers reshaping fragments of knowledge into new perspectives. Across new disciplines, from experimental philosophy to archaeology and museology, they reexamined what knowledge was, who it was for, and how it was to be stored, managed, accessed, judged, and transformed. Although later typecast as Baroque obstacles to be overcome by the Enlightenment, these academics arranged knowledge in dynamic infrastructures that encouraged its further advancement in later generations, including our own. This study examines these seventeenth-century practices as part of a continuous intellectual tradition and reconceptualizes our understanding of the Enlightenment.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

In this wide-ranging work, Michael Sonenscher traces the origins of modern political thought and ideologies to a question, raised by Immanuel Kant, about what is involved in comparing individual human lives to the whole of human history. How can we compare them, or understand the results of the comparison? Kant’s question injected a new, future-oriented dimension into existing discussions of prevailing norms, challenging their orientation toward the past. This reversal made Kant’s question a bridge between three successive sets of arguments: between the supporters of the ancients and moderns, the classics and romantics, and the Romans and the Germans. Sonenscher argues that the genealogy of modern political ideologies—from liberalism to nationalism to communism—can be connected to the resulting discussions of time, history, and values, mainly in France but also in Germany, Switzerland, and Britain, in the period straddling the French and Industrial revolutions.What is the genuinely human content of human history? Everything begins somewhere—democracy with the Greeks, or the idea of a res publica with the Romans—but these local arrangements have become vectors of values that are, apparently, universal. The intellectual upheaval that Sonenscher describes involved a struggle to close the gap, highlighted by Kant, between individual lives and human history. After Kant is an examination of that struggle’s enduring impact on the history and the historiography of political thought.Michael Sonenscher is a fellow of King’s College at the University of Cambridge. His many books include Before the Deluge (Princeton), Sans-Culottes (Princeton), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

After World War II, when a new German democracy was born in the western region of the vanquished Third Reich, tens of thousands of civil servants were hired to work for newly formed government agencies to get the new republic quickly on its feet. But there was an enormous flaw in the plan: no serious vetting system was put in place to keep war criminals out of government positions.As discussed in Nazis at the Watercooler: War Criminals in Postwar German Government Agencies (University of Nebraska Press, 2024) by Terrence Petty, ex-Nazis—people who had been involved in mass murder, drafting antisemitic laws, and the persecution of Hitler’s opponents, as well as other depravities—resumed their careers without consequence in the newly created Federal Republic of Germany. Former Nazis who had established an early foothold in postwar government agencies helped each other get government work by writing letters of recommendation called Persilscheine. These “Persil Certificates,” named after a popular detergent, made an ex-Nazi’s recorded past just as clean as fresh laundry, and a whole generation of German government officials with Nazi pasts was never brought to account.Ex-Nazis were given preference for government jobs even over victims of Nazi policies and anti-Hitler resisters. They swapped Nazi uniforms for suits, Hitler salutes for handshakes. And with help from the highest levels of West German government and even the CIA, they swept their crimes under the carpet and resurrected their careers. Nazis at the Watercooler illuminates the network of ex–Third Reich loyalists and the U.S. government’s complicity that enabled this mass impunity.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

In Vocabulaire de Laplanche (PUF, 2024), edited by the renowned scholar and analyst, Hélène Tessier, several of the key readers of Jean Laplanche's work propose what is nothing short of a revelation for Laplanche studies. Theirs is a vocabulary that provides a concise and accessible dictionary of key Laplanchian terms, inviting readers of Laplanche's work to engage with the French psychoanalyst's work.In a wide-ranging conversation, professor Tessier delves into Laplanche's work, highlighting the importance of linking/dellinking to his thinking, establishing connections with sublimation and questions of culture and the drives. Tessier embarks on a real tour de force, reconstructing Laplanche's work with the utmost of passion. It was a wonderful conversation that has me ever convinced in stating that this book is a must-have for any Francophone psychoanalyst or scholar of psychonalysis.Interview conducted by Myriam Sauer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Shoes are everyday objects but they are loaded with meaning. Shoes and the Georgian Man (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Matthew McCormack reveals how shoes played a powerful role in the wider story of shifts in gender relations in 18th-century Britain. It focuses on the relationship of shoes with the body and its movements, and therefore how what we wear on our feet relates closely to social, occupational and gender roles. It also uses footwear to explore topics such as politics, war, dance and disability.Thinking about shoes as material objects, Dr. McCormack studied historic shoes first-hand in museums, in order to ascertain their physical properties and what they would have been like to wear. Worn shoes preserve traces of the wearer's body in their indentations, stretches and scuffs, providing a unique primary source about their wearer. This approach forges new connections between the histories or material culture, gender and the body, and sheds new light on what it meant to be a man in the 18th century.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Samuel Beckett and Recent Irish Fiction: A Comparative Study (Routledge, 2025) considers Samuel Beckett's fiction and drama as major aesthetic and thematic influences on the work of Irish authors Eimear McBride, Keith Ridgway, Emma Donoghue, and Kevin Barry in the post-crash period of 2009-2015. Through cross-comparisons between the aesthetics and form of Beckett's Trilogy, Mercier and Camier, Footfalls and Not I, and those of a range of post-crash Irish novels including Beatlebone, Hawthorn and Child, Room, and A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing, this book establishes Beckett's continuing influence on Irish fiction. With particular reference to these newer authors' treatment of scarcity, trauma, indeterminism, gender and sexuality, and confinement in the context of major societal changes and traumas in Irish society since 2009, topics include the imposition of austerity, collapse of faith in institutions, and the increasing recognition of LGBTQIA+ and reproductive rights. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Using a wide range of archival material and a microhistorical approach, Plagues of the Heart: Crisis and Covenanting in a Seventeenth-Century Scottish Town (Manchester UP, 2024) by Dr. Michelle Brock explores the formation, practice and performance of protestant identity amid the interlocking crises of the seventeenth century. Taking the southwestern port city of Ayr as a remarkable but revealing case study, this book argues that under the stewardship of a generation of radical clergy, Scotland developed a distinct and durable 'culture of covenanting'. This culture was created not simply by swearing the National Covenant of 1638 and the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, but through reimagining the post-Reformation program of discipline and worship around hard-line interpretations of those covenants.This compelling story of one Scottish town and its long-serving minister offers a fresh understanding of how protestant communities across the early modern world grappled with religion and identity during a remarkably tumultuous age.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Who owns Scotland? How did they get it? What happened to all the common land in Scotland? Has the Scottish Parliament made any difference? Can we get our common good land back? In this updated edition of The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland and How They Got it (Birlinn, 2024), Andy Wightman updates the statistics of landownership in Scotland and explores how and why landowners got their hands on the millions of acres of land that were once held in common.He tells the untold story of how Scotland's legal establishment and politicians managed to appropriate land through legal fixes. Have attempts to redistribute this power more equitably made any difference, and what are the full implications of the recent debt-fuelled housing bubble, the Smith Commission and the new Scottish Government's proposals on land reform? For all those with an interest in urban and rural land in Scotland, this updated edition of The Poor Had No Lawyers provides a fascinating analysis of one the most important political questions in Scotland.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

How do Black women experience education in Britain?Within British educational research about Black students, gender distinctions have been largely absent, male-dominated or American-centric. Due to the lack of attention paid to Black female students, relatively little is known about how they understand and engage with the education system, or the influences which shape their long-term strategies and decision-making in order to gain educational 'success'.Babygirl, You've Got This! Experiences of Black Girls and Women in the English Education System (Bloomsbury, 2024) by Dr. April-Louise Pennant will illustrate the educational experiences and journeys of Black British women graduates and considers the influence of the intersections of race, gender, ethnicity, culture and social class on their educational journeys. Dr. Pennant uniquely documents the entire educational journey - from primary school to university - within both predominantly white (PW) and predominantly global majority (PGM) educational institutions in order to examine the various accessibility, financial and academic hurdles which face Black girls and women.The book combines theoretical frameworks such as Critical Race Theory, Bourdieu's Theory of Practice and Black Feminist epistemology, alongside the personal accounts of the author and a range of Black British women graduates. Through analysis of the strategies, choices and decisions made by Black British women in their educational journeys, the book ultimately provides insights into how to navigate the education system effectively, and provides alternatives to normalised understandings of educational 'success'.Find out more about Dr. April-Louise Pennant on her website!This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies